Hero photograph
 
Photo by Rob Naysmith

News from the Board of Trustees

Halswell School Board of Trustees —

Survey and Strategic Planning:

We recently sought your opinion via the school survey and would like to thank each of you for the responses provided. This is the second year we have run the survey and your feedback has been considered in the Strategic planning for 2018 and beyond. The results of the survey are summarised below in the graphs and key findings.

This year we also asked whether international travel should continue and we are pleased to report that the majority of the school community would like to see this continue. We took on board your comments about the trips being self-funding, and we can confirm that the 2017 trip to Japan was fully funded by the travelling students and their fundraising efforts, and all trips in the future will only go ahead if they are self-funded.

Your feedback has been read and analysed in a similar manner to last year’s comments. Please refer to the graphs below, and the summary comments.

Key findings from the Survey

Please see the two graphs in the photo gallery below

Summary Comments

  • Respondents generally more positive than last year – this is reflected in the comments and the increase in overall rating from 3.74 to 4.17, which is a shift of approximately 10% in the right direction.
  • Teaching staff still rock!
  • People are much less happy with the environment in general (dropped from 24% to 12% best thing) – Perceived overcrowding and MLE environment are key factors in this shift.
  • The increase in values / community / beliefs etc is relatively high compared to other category increases.
  • External environment is much less of a concern this year, however indoor environment is not meeting expectations of our community
  • Issues with communications still exist – this is more pronounced when you add the teacher reporting (which is shown as a separate indicator this year)
  • There has been a slight reduction in the perception of School leadership this year
  • Learning seems to have less negative comments, however we need to be aware of the correlation between learning and indoor environment as many comments connect these together when asked what we could do better.
  • Parents are concerned about the vertical learning model which has been implemented across the school
  • Considerably less comments were provided in relation to bullying this year compared to last
  • Although the comments about the library have been grouped into the ‘Other’ category, there is genuine appreciation for the programmes Zac McCallum is running out of the library.
  • There is a spike in the ‘other’ category showing in the ‘Areas to work on’ graph. A good portion of these comments were requests for school pets of various species.

Based on this feedback from the community and strategic planning with the teaching staff, the following will be the key areas we will be working on in 2018 and beyond:

  • Learning Power – Continuing to create classroom cultures that cultivate the habits and attitudes of curious, confident and independent learners.
  • Reporting – Continue to enhance student reporting (Note: National Standards are no longer a reporting requirement under the new Labour Govt.)
  • Curriculum – updating our curriculum to ensure we continue to meet Ministry guidelines as they undergo change
  • Bobby Maths – Engaging students in maths using an enquiry approach – we will be trialling this programme in 2018
  • Communication / Community – continuing the work identified in our communication review – including the development of school community and support networks
  • Signage & Landscaping – Building signage and a range of landscaping projects are to be installed in 2018

Thanks again for your feedback. Enjoy the festive season and the summer break. We look forward to seeing you back in the new year.